I’m pretty sure I watched the entire Daly/Gless series when it aired — or at least once it was parked in that Monday at 10PM spot. Some TV series become “appointment TV” — and Cagney & Lacey was one of those for me.

The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn’t find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head.

Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill.

But Simmons really got spooked when he was teaching a class on identifying oak and hickory trees late last month. For 2 1/2 miles, Simmons and other naturalists hiked through Northern Virginia oak and hickory forests. They sifted through leaves on the ground, dug in the dirt and peered into the tree canopies. Nothing.

SOME of Britain’s biggest supermarket chains are compromising on quality by selling budget items such as sausage rolls with as little as 6% pork.

Sainsbury’s and Tesco are working hard to market their low-cost lines as they compete with discount chains to attract cash-strapped shoppers.

This is often coming at the expense of quality, however. An analysis of low-cost foods at the two chains has found, in addition to the sausage rolls, fisherman’s pies with 9% fish and square cheese slices with 11% cheese. The products have been bulked out with ingredients such as water, animal fat and sugar.

Emphasis added by me.

Ew.

But what this reporter missed is something very important in a Comment:

As a retired Chemist I read the labels with some interest. Lists of ingredients now tend to include margarine. It seems that “hydrogenated vegetable oil” is a no no. However margarine IS by definition hydrogenated vegetable oil.

Cynical manipulation of the public by big business as usual.

Emphasis added by me.

Be careful what you stock up on. With some of these items, it’d be healthier to starve.